Collected Stories

Collected Stories

It isn’t Salter’s language alone that numbers him among the masters,
but it is what strikes you first. From Light Years of 1975: ‘On the
stands in nearby orchards were hard, yellow apples filled with
powerful juice. They exploded against the teeth, they spat white
flecks like arguments.’ From the story ‘Am Strande von Tanger’, on
the death of a bird: ‘A heart no bigger than an orange seed has ceased
to beat.’ From his first novel, The Hunters of 1957, a description
of fuel tanks jettisoned by fighters, falling from high altitude over
Korea: ‘There were a dozen or more, going down like thin cries fading
in silence.’